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Re:The new warrant: how US police mine Google for your locat... by flanbiscuit on Thursday September 16, 2021 @02:21PM (#28555226)
I recently set my google location history to auto-delete. At first I wanted to keep it recording my location history forever because "just in case" I needed to know where I was for something that was extremely unimportant. Overall, I've looked at it only handful of times over the many years it has been running so in the end it really helps Google more than it helps me. I might even just turn it off completely. I'm slowly shirking this data-hoarding, "I might need it one day", mentality.
Re:The new warrant: how US police mine Google for your locat... by Syonyk on Thursday September 16, 2021 @02:35PM (#28555409)
I love Google Location History.

If you're trying to make a point to someone about how much of a problem data collection, use, abuse, etc, is - link them to the place they can view their own history. It's even more fun if you're with them and can watch the expression of utter horror form as they realize just what, exactly, literally everywhere they've been can tell someone else about them. "Hey, isn't that the kink club out there?"

Re:The new warrant: how US police mine Google for your locat... by genewitch on Thursday September 16, 2021 @04:06PM (#28556790)
I check this from time to time and mine has always been completely blank.

Even on my phone when I search for "tires in <city>" it assumes I mean a city in the east coast of the US. Maps/Waze are only marginally better, showing me results 170+ miles from my current location, generally.

I use trackmenot and ad nauseam plugins on my main computer, so my ads are always 100% irrelevant - if I see them at all. Ad nauseam clicks every ad it sees, and stores the banner. It tries to track how many dollars of ad spend its wasted on your behalf, too. I'm somewhere north of $17k at this point lifetime clicks.

I know I'm not winning this fight but I can make it more hilarious for me in the meantime.

Re:The new warrant: how US police mine Google for your locat... by iamstupidsimple on Thursday September 16, 2021 @06:46PM (#28558767)
That $17k would've either been rejected as ad fraud in the best case, and just ended up funding the companies you hate at worst.
Re:The new warrant: how US police mine Google for your locat... by genewitch on Friday September 17, 2021 @05:48AM (#28563244)
That's assuming they can dis-aggregate my traffic at the F5 gateway well enough[0], otherwise they're just saying all traffic out of that rack in Dallas, TX is invalid. A personal web browser clicking ads on pages i visit doesn't feel very fraudulent.

[0] google routinely can't, and i stopped using search because it made me do photo captchas every time. If google can't, i'm guessing other people are going to have less luck.

Re:The new warrant: how US police mine Google for your locat... by iamstupidsimple on Saturday September 18, 2021 @09:06AM (#28575937)
Being Captcha'd likey means that those systems know not to trust your clicks. I seriously doubt you're doing any damage here, and at worst you're helping the companies you dislike.
Re:The new warrant: how US police mine Google for your locat... by lotsofpulp on Thursday September 16, 2021 @04:08PM (#28556810)
Would they be horrified of going to a kink club? I feel like the type of person that would go to one, especially these days, would not care.
Re:The new warrant: how US police mine Google for your locat... by Kiro on Thursday September 16, 2021 @05:23PM (#28557821)
I've not seen that reaction at all. Everyone gets really excited when I show them.
Re:The new warrant: how US police mine Google for your locat... by jjoonathan on Thursday September 16, 2021 @02:44PM (#28555552)
Do we have reason to believe that auto-delete means anything other than "hide it from me, please?"
Re:The new warrant: how US police mine Google for your locat... by Y_Y on Thursday September 16, 2021 @02:55PM (#28555697)
At least in the EU, they run the (qualified) risk of a collosal statutory fine. It wouldn't be easy to get them audited (particularly in Ireland where the Data Protection Commission favours discretion over valour), and they'd have to actually get caught. Assuming that they didn't hide the evidence, and the auditors found it, and the necessary hoops were jumped, it could be financially and reputationally painful, even for big G.
Re:The new warrant: how US police mine Google for your locat... by endless1234 on Thursday September 16, 2021 @04:21PM (#28557011)
If so, why believe "don't save location history" would mean anything either?
Re:The new warrant: how US police mine Google for your locat... by sodality2 on Thursday September 16, 2021 @05:24PM (#28557852)
Difference being "don't save" would mean not being ingested at all; if it is sent to google, a stink could be made (perhaps by sniffing netreqs, looking at GPS requests, etc). Once it's in Google, us peons would have no way to verify any claim.
Re:The new warrant: how US police mine Google for your locat... by goodpoint on Thursday September 16, 2021 @06:39PM (#28558705)
No. "don't save" does not mean "don't send to google".

All geolocation based on GSM cells and wifi sends your location continuously.

Re:The new warrant: how US police mine Google for your locat... by spoonjim on Thursday September 16, 2021 @08:40PM (#28559688)
How can it be not ingested at all? If Google is giving me turn by turn directions it needs to know where I am.
Re:The new warrant: how US police mine Google for your locat... by sodality2 on Thursday September 16, 2021 @10:34PM (#28560595)
Google maps vs tracking location at all times, though.
Re:The new warrant: how US police mine Google for your locat... by KingMachiavelli on Thursday September 16, 2021 @02:50PM (#28555632)
I believe according to their privacy policy and from past press statements deleting the data does trigger a real wipe of the data but I think there is a up to 30 day delay (not sure exactly) (wiping data from thousands of servers is actually kind of difficult).

If your threat level is NSA/nation state then this isn't good enough since they probably could get a copy before Google deletes it but it is probably enough to be useless for low level LE.

Re:The new warrant: how US police mine Google for your locat... by MomoXenosaga on Thursday September 16, 2021 @03:39PM (#28556361)
At the risk of sounding paranoid but how do we know if they actually pause/delete it?